Euclid Makes Indoor Analytics Free

Indoor analytics provider Euclid, which calls itself “Google Analytics for the physical world,” has now adopted a “freemium” model. Today it’s introducing a product called Euclid Express, which offers free indoor analytics to all comers.

The product assumes an existing WiFi set up at the retail or other location(s). However the company will provide WiFi beacons (not to be confused with iBeacons) for a small fee if not.

Euclid’s paid model still exists: $100 per month per store. However Euclid co-founder Will Smith told me that the product has evolved to the point where a set of features could be offered for free. He’s also trying to remove any objections or barriers to adoption.

“We’ve made it so easy from an installation and pricing perspective there’s no reason not to do this,” argued Smith. I asked whether the free model was designed to attract small businesses. But he indicated that it was mostly intended to get large and medium-sized (e.g., specialty) retailers on board.

During the past four months during which Express has been in beta Smith said that he’s had 400 new customers sign up. Indeed, the market is heating up with a range of competitors offering retailers and others indoor analytics (including RetailNext, iInside, Nomi, among perhaps a dozen others). These entities are not to be confused with companies such as Placed and PlaceIQ, which track online and mobile ad exposures to local store visits — although all these capabilities will ultimately be combined.

The free product will provide information such as average duration of visits, number of unique visitors, daypart concentration of visits and recency/frequency. All this data is provided in real-time.

Smith proudly told me that all of this is done in the most privacy compliant way possible and that Euclid is the only entity in the segment to be a Privacy by Design Ambassador.

Euclid is the company that together with partner Nordstrom received a lot of negative coverage for promoting “indoor surveillance.” However that coverage mostly misunderstood what was going on. Smith now says that privacy is one of Euclid’s differentiators vs. competitors.

Much of the coverage of indoor location and analytics has been focused of late on Apple’s iBeacon offering (Bluetooth low energy). However indoor location and analytics can be provided by a range of technologies, including WiFi. That’s the primary technology that Euclid uses.

I asked Smith whether the enthusiasm and interest in iBeacon had impacted his business. He said it has impacted planning (for the future) but not demand from customers. He said that Euclid has “shipped more sensors in last two quarters than at any time in the lifetime of the company.”

Below is a video from Opus Research’s Place Conference panel “Digital Analytics for the Real World,” on which Smith spoke in October: